Sociology - What is wrong with the profession of sociology?

[cutie_me01]

According to Alan Blum, sociologists constantly engage in a matter of everyday practice that is "wrong". What would that be and what would "doing right" look like?

I know that like every group, sociology follows a particular method, and fails to study itself. It also miseducates and cultivates ignorance. Any more ideas?

[Haight]

Why don't you ask Alan?

[forzen]

It doesn't belong under science or religion. Its "science" is based on facts that has been refuted many times. It's like fortune telling, its only purpose is to read while taking a long hard dump and not to be taken seriously. We'll that's my opinion anyways, i'm full of those and I always carry a spare whenever needed.

[run]

Originally Posted by cutie_me01

I know that like every group, sociology follows a particular method, and fails to study itself. It also miseducates and cultivates ignorance. Any more ideas?

Yeah. Sociologists don't make the distinction between the cultural relativity of moral opinions and the self-existant objectivity of moral facts to which the opinions opine. All cultures have believed in some moral absolutes, and just about everyone who has ever lived has believed in the same moral principles -- fairness, justice, courage, respect. The problems is in seeing the distinction between these common principles, and people's opinions of the applications of these principles.

What is justice? vs. what is a just act? We all value justice. We differ in what acts we think are just.

Moral relativism is false, because it uses a false premise of what morality really is (principles, not applications)

I think I'm about to derail your thread with that

[Evan]

I have no idea why you guys don't consider sociology to be a science. It's all sampling and hypothesis testing, etc.

[Lark]

Sociology doesnt miseducate or cultivate ignorance, how does it?

[ajblaise]

Most of the animosity towards sociology is political. Of course there's nothing wrong with studying human social behavior in an academic setting, it should be encouraged. The same people who criticize sociology usually don't criticize other social sciences like history or economics. This is because there is a part of sociology that has the goal of using sociological knowledge to help solve social problems. A lot of the time this calls for public supported action, some level of government support, as not many entities have that power to be able to proactively deal with large-scale social issues. This favors left-of-center politics.

Examples of the government stepping in to help deal with perceived social problems include making anti-discrimination laws, civil rights, human rights legislation, environmental protections, hate crime laws. Historically, people on the Right have been the ones fighting against this kind of social change.

[avolkiteshvara]

Isn't everything sociology. Life is sociology.

[ajblaise]

Originally Posted by avolkiteshvara

Isn't everything sociology. Life is sociology.

Yeah that's the thing about the social sciences. They're so much more immediately relevant to our lives than the physical sciences, which tend to be further detached from human experience and often measures things on a micro scale so there's a level of abstraction. Physical science is of course much more precise than social science, it's much more rigorous scientifically. And the two studies can mesh, like with cognitive science.

I think psychology, history, and international relations is a lot more interesting than chemistry, geology, and soil science.

[Lark]

Ajblaise, they do contain more bias than the natural or physical sciences.

The prejudices against sociology amuse me sometimes, considering that the US sociologist Robert Nisbet, one of the best, was also infact a militant conservative and wrote some balanced and interesting books taking stock of the promise and reality of conservatism as an ideology.

He would suggest that sociology is as much indebted to conservatism for its conceptual origin as Marx, for instance it is conservatism which resisted both individualism and statism as inorganic abstract inventions contrary to family, community and society.

Sociology is supposed to engage in description and not prescription, properly understood the descriptions could be used to advance either conservative or progressive or even transformative prescriptions. The animosity towards sociologists is probably more than lefty academic bashing, although lots of woolly lefty academics do engage in poor sociology.